Abortion
and Rights,a special
edition of the International
Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, is devoted to articles
contributed by LFL. It was edited by Doris Gordon and John Walker of
LFL.
Single
copies are available from LFL as a fundraiser for a contribution of
$25.00 or more. (Contributions to LFL are not tax
deductible.)

"My
hope is to introduce as many who will listen,
regardless of where they stand,
to Libertarians for Life.
For their arguments are persuasive,
reasoning from science and philosophy.
Anyone with an objective mind
will find them hard to ignore."
-Gary Cherone

If you
like our website, please help!
Please send check or money order to:
Libertarians for Life
13424 Hathaway Drive
Wheaton, MD 20906
Contributions to LFL are not tax deductible.

The
Libertarian Case Against Abortion

One
popular misconception is that libertarianism as a political
principle supports choice on abortion. And major
elements within the libertarian movement (the Libertarian
Party, for example) take abortion-choice stands.
Nonetheless, libertarianism's basic principle is that each
of us has the obligation not to aggress against (violate
the rights of) anyone else -- for any reason (personal,
social, or political), however worthy. That is a
clearly pro-life principle. Recognizing that, and
seeing the abortion-choice drift within the libertarian
movement, Libertarians for Life was founded in 1976 to show
why abortion is a wrong under justice, not a
right.

We
see our mission as presenting the pro-life case to
libertarians and the libertarian case to pro-lifers.
Among supporters of LFL, some of us are members of the
Libertarian Party, some are not. Some are religious,
some are not. (Doris Gordon, our Founder and
Coordinator, is a Jewish atheist.) Our reasoning is
expressly scientific and philosophical rather than either
pragmatic or religious, or merely political or
emotional.

To explain and defend our
case, LFL argues that:

1. Human offspring are human beings, persons from
conception, whether that takes place as natural or artificial
fertilization, by cloning, or by any other means.

2. Abortion is homicide -- the killing of
one person by another.

3. One's right to control one's own body does not allow violating
the obligation not to aggress. There is never a right to kill an
innocent person. Prenatally, we are all innocent
persons.

4. A prenatal child has the right to be in
the mother's body. Parents have no right to evict their
children from the crib or from the womb and let them die.
Instead both parents, the father as well as the mother, owe
them support and protection from
harm.

5. No government, nor any individual, has a
just power to legally "de-person" any one of us, born or
preborn.

6. The proper purpose of the law is to side
with the innocent, not against
them.